I'm a lazy composter. No really. I'm REALLY a lazy composter. Here's my 4x2 foot compost pile which we just pile stuff in and I RARELY turn.

Compost bin full of fall leaves with a variety of goodies underneath.

So for days I've been thinking it's time to plant my peas and I am going to go harvest that compost that I'm SURE is below all that detritus. But in order to do that I needed to move all this stuff, to a new location to access the compost on the bottom of the bin. Enter, my old garden bed. This bed no longer gets enough sun to grow anything, even in the summer, so it's a perfect spot.

Here's the old garden bed with all the un-decomposed stuff from the compost bin on top. I watered it deeply and now we wait. Although most likely I'll be turning this one instead of being lazy as usual.

Once I got rid of the top stuff I discovered a beautiful layer of compost, just as I'd expected. But it still had roots and large chunks I didn't want in the final soil. So I channeled my old life as an archaeologist (I'm not joking folks) and sifted the whole lot.

The compost is on the right, the seedling tray I used as a screen on the tarp. Ready to go!

My youngest son Aidan helped. He loves hacking through piles of dirt with a pitchfork. After just a short while, we were done.

Aidan posing with our new composted soil.

It's fluffy and full of happy bugs. Undoubtedly we'll get a few pumpkin volunteers from it this year but I'm fine with that since I adore pumpkins!

The next step was to use some of it to lay a new raised bed to plant our peas.

Raised row planted with peas with our handmade trellis to support them as they grow.

The final step was wrapping up the rest of the soil in the tarp to protect it and replacing the compost bin. This time I shrank it down considerably. Now it's about 2 feet in diameter. This time around I'm NOT going to be a lazy composter. I'm going to turn it constantly and keep it hot and wet so I get get my compost quicker.

The bin reset, much smaller and more manageable for turning.

Compost happens no matter what but being an active composter as opposed to a lazy one, definitely gives you faster results.

What kind of composter are you? Do you sheet (lasagna) compost? Do you have a lazy pile which just turns over time? Do you actively turn your compost?